


Our Hell is a Good Life

by omnishambles



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Iron Man 3, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 22:44:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omnishambles/pseuds/omnishambles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce hated the feeling that, so far, the other guy had done a far better job of saving Tony Stark than he seemed capable of himself.</p><p>Set post-Avengers, up to the end of Iron Man 3; why Bruce ended up having the whole thing told to him and where he was instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Hell is a Good Life

**Author's Note:**

> My memory of both Hulk films is kind of hazy, so forgive me if I've played fast and loose with any of the canon.   
> Thanks to [equestrianstatue](http://archiveofourown.org/users/equestrianstatue/pseuds/equestrianstatue), as always, for help & encouragement.  
> For EF, who has had an unfair time the last few months; sorry this took so long.

“I realize we’re still getting to know each other,” said Tony Stark’s voice. “So how would you react if I said I told you so?”

Bruce blinked his eyes open; he was lying on the floor with Iron Man crouched beside him. The front part of the mask was flipped open, to reveal an expression so smug that it was impressive to see it on a normal, completely un-digitally-enhanced human face. Except Bruce was shivering in the tatters of his clothes and couldn’t remember how to put words into any sort of order, and maybe Tony got that because he just pressed right on.

“I mean," he said, “are you gracious and accepting in the face of humiliating defeat, or is that the kind of thing that makes you go all big and green? Because for what it’s worth, I totally, one hundred per cent told you so.”

Bruce huffed a laugh that creaked with the dust of a dozen smashed-through walls, buried in the lining of his lungs. “I’m very gracious,” he said.

Tony grinned.

It was always strange, afterwards, to remember how it felt to be the Other Guy – and it never really stopped being strange. The Hulk was driven by sense and smell, by beast-instincts, in a way that didn’t relate to the normal function of Bruce’s brain. He usually had a rough idea what had happened, but it was – images. Feelings.

“Hey,” Bruce said, remembering with a sudden jolt the leap, the pull of instinct, the roar of a wounded creature that was in some part, he knew Tony would insist, himself. “He saved you.”

“ _You_ saved me. Which, thanks for that, by the way. It would’ve been a real downer ending to an otherwise largely successful day.”

“And Loki –”

“Is next door.”

It was around this point that Bruce managed to take in his surroundings for the first time. “Hey look,” he said. “I’m in a lab.”

“One of Stark Tower’s finest, and you didn’t even make a mess. The Big Guy crawls into a laboratory to curl up and lie down, and you go round claiming he’s not a bit like you?” Tony waved a hand derisively, which in his Iron Man suit looked strangely comic.

“Candyland,” Bruce said quietly.

And Tony said, “So how about that offer? Seeing as how I told you so.”

After that, Bruce just kind of didn’t leave.

+

Like all preternaturally intelligent children, Bruce was curious about everything under the sun and beyond it, and a ruthless memorizer of facts. He started with dinosaurs, moved on quickly to animals in general, all fauna, all flora, memorizing regions, Latin names. By the time he was seven he knew enough about butterflies, pond life, evolution and Ancient Egypt to intimidate the average adult in very specific conversational arenas.

Lucky for Bruce, he didn’t meet a lot of average adults. Nobody told him he should be outside playing with the other boys and girls on his block, or that it was unhealthy to be so alone, so obsessive. Instead, he was given microscopes and telescopes for his birthdays, books on DNA, cloud formations, string theory. His mother said that he could be whatever he wanted to be.

And at eleven, when his aunt asked him what indeed that was, what he wanted to do when he grew up, he told her that he wanted to be a doctor.

“Good choice,” she said. “Your grandfather was a doctor, did you know that? He helped a lot of people.”

And Bruce replied, “No, Auntie Jane, not a doctor of medicine. I want to be a doctor of everything.”

+

A lot of the time, Bruce felt like he was on the back foot with Tony, playing catch-up, still just getting the throwaway joke from four sentences back while Tony was already thinking about something else. Somehow, though, he also managed to make Bruce feel like one of the most intelligent and important people he knew. This may be because he gave off an air that Bruce could only describe as ‘I am Tony Stark So Why Would I Hang Out With Anybody Sub-Par?’

He was so bizarrely relaxed about the whole thing – _sure, move in, there’s loads of floors nobody’s using, I just wanted it to be, like, a really really tall building_ – that Bruce felt a strange kind of embarrassment. He wasn't embarrassed for Tony, because obviously there was nothing shameful about generosity, but such an open display of wealth made him uncomfortable. It had been a long time since he hadn't had to worry about money, and it was weird to remember that Tony had no idea what it felt like – that tugging sensation of knowing, not only logically but deeper, somewhere in your gut, that if you didn't work today, you wouldn't eat tomorrow. 

At first, Bruce used to think it was funny how becoming roommates with the Other Guy in the most intimate sense made his real self resemble him, made him bestial. He lived for years feeling hunted, afraid, angry, but without the same raw power to offset it, most of the time. Eventually, he thought it was funny to live in the same place all the time and wake up every day beneath an actual ceiling that he recognized. He said as much to Tony one afternoon in his second week, when they were working in the lab.

Tony looked up at him from one of Iron Man’s forearms (he was tinkering), and raised an eyebrow.

Bruce felt suddenly that he had given himself away, and looked down, taking his glasses off; a nervous habit he’d had ever since he first needed to wear them. When he was thirteen, they made him self-conscious, so he was perpetually growing uncomfortable, removing them, getting annoyed at being unable to see and putting them back on. Not that they made him self-conscious these days, obviously. He had bigger and more terrible things to be self-conscious about.

“Well, yeah,” said Tony, “all mod-cons at Stark Tower. Roof, plumbing, the works.”

Most people would have left it there if they even got that far. Mostly everyone at SHIELD treated Bruce with a kind of quiet respect and a certain level of distance, probably some combination of a) figuring out for themselves that the last several years had been unpleasant ones and he wouldn't want to discuss them, and b) a slight reticence at the thought ever pushing the buttons, in any way, of someone whose gigantic green wrath they were frightened to incur.

For whatever reason, Tony had no such qualms. He asked questions about the Other Guy all the time, from the scientifically justifiable to the ridiculous (‘have you ever peed as the Hulk? I mean, even he must need to go sometimes’), and was fearless about him, to a degree that Bruce had not experienced since before he was something to be feared. Bruce would never say as much to Tony, his head was swollen enough already, but he felt he would never get tired of Tony looking at him like that – without any fear at all.

“And lovely plumbing it is too,” Bruce said, trying to get back to work. His cheeks were hot and he could feel Tony peering at him across the desk, screwdriver forgotten in one hand.

“You ought to stop being surprised that that ceiling is there every day, you know,” Tony said at length. “It’s not going anywhere.”

Bruce nodded slowly and after a moment he met Tony’s eyes. The look Tony was giving him was almost impossibly intent and weirdly sincere. Bruce couldn't say anything for a moment.

Tony said, “This is your home for as long as you want it to be.” Bruce didn't say anything, just sat there with Tony peering at him. After a minute, Tony said, “Okay?”

“Okay,” said Bruce.

He was making himself a cup of tea next morning when he realized that the feeling in his chest was one of contentment. Not quite happiness, nothing so ecstatic or preposterous, but a sense for the first time in what felt like a lifetime of how he used to feel before. And he laughed to himself, standing barefoot and alone in the kitchen, holding a teaspoon between his thumb and forefinger. He tapped it against the palm of his hand, feeling the warmth of the metal, and said to himself, “Well what do you know.”

With the feeling of contentment came, slowly, another long-forgotten feeling: being glad, grateful, to be alive. Bruce looked out over Manhattan from the top of Stark Tower and remembered the feeling of the gun in his hand, the barrel in his mouth, cold on his lips, and he thought, _thank God_.

Not that Bruce was a religious man. If he was, he knows he would have felt in the darkest months, in the dead years, that God was punishing him for thinking men like him could make themselves into something else – for having the audacity to play at being His equal.

But Bruce did not believe in God and he was certain always of two things. Firstly, he understood (if only in the loosest possible sense, as it had been in error) what the radiation did to every cell, every string of DNA inside of him, and knew that it was purely science he had transgressed against and science that was punishing him. Secondly, he had felt in his bones, with the most painful certainty, that there was no God and no forgiveness for him anywhere under the sun.

Changing was painful as well as confusing, it was all Bruce’s nerve-endings in revolt against him. The second time it ever happened, he remembered for no reason something he’d learnt as a child from some book or other, probably his mother’s etymological dictionary. Anyway, what he remembered was this: that the root of the word 'pain' is the Latin _poena_ and it means both ‘penalty’ and ‘punishment.’ It was like the child in him spoke to the disappearing man in him at that moment and said in its clear, child’s voice, the voice that planned to be a doctor of everything, to fix the whole entire world, _Bruce Banner, you deserve this._

+

Tony may not have been scared of the Other Guy, but that didn't mean Bruce wasn't.

“No more probing me with things,” he insisted when he moved in. “I mean it. That thing's a wild animal, not a pet.”

“I always wanted a dog,” Tony said wistfully. “This is so much better.”

“Not a pet. _Not_ a pet. Which part of ‘not’ failed to get through to you?”

Bruce thought it would probably have been better for Tony if he had just gotten a dog after all, but he was pretty grateful he hadn't. He owed Tony a lot, he knew, and it bothered him that he could think of nothing to do by way of thanks except obvious things – like talking to Tony late into the night about gamma radiation, working hard, and occasionally cooking nice dinners for Tony and Pepper, if she was around. Bruce was a good cook.

“It’s just following instructions,” he said flatly, the first time, in the face of Tony’s utter bafflement. 

Pepper shook her head. “He’s a lost cause,” she said, “don’t bother. He can’t boil an egg.”

Bruce got the impression that maybe the two of them were seeing each other once, but it hadn't worked out. He didn't raise the topic; anyway, Pepper was busy running Tony’s company and mostly she was in LA, so nine times out of ten, it was just the two of them. Perhaps this was why he’d only been living with Tony for a month, maybe less, by the time he realized Tony was, if not a paid-up, flag-waving alcoholic, definitely in the club.

Bruce knew the signs. He remembered, as a boy, trailing round after his father when he’d visit three or four different 7-Elevens in one evening; a habit borne out of baseless paranoia, so that amount of liquor he bought never looked like too much. It wasn't something Bruce had really thought about for years, but the mood-swings, the tempestuousness, it was obvious to somebody who knew.

He was still more surprised to note that, with the exception of himself, Tony saw very little of the other Avengers. Yeah, Steve came by sometimes to watch films (and wind Tony up by refusing to call the building Stark Tower, referring to it alternately as, ‘Tony Towers’, ‘The Eyesore’ and ‘Starkland’) – but it was Bruce who invited him.

It wasn't what he’d expected, somehow. Tony laughed in his face, not cruelly but with genuine amusement, when he said this.

"What," said Tony. "Did you imagine we'd all suddenly be super-friends and go for brunch?"

Bruce went red. That was pretty much exactly what he'd imagined. Tony’s expression softened and he shook his head.

"Sorry, but - come on. What would we talk about? What have we got in common?"

Bruce raised his eyebrows. "You honestly didn't find saving the world a uniquely bonding experience?"

All right, maybe they didn't all go for brunches even without Tony, but Bruce was old-fashioned enough to think that that kind of experience meant something. Plus, he'd been lonely a long time before now; he considered these people his friends.

So sometimes Bruce visited New York’s museums and galleries with Steve, catching him up on the kind of world history the SHIELD briefings had missed out, like Marilyn Monroe and Banksy and The Beatles, and other times he went for dinners with Natasha.

It was an interesting experience, eating with a woman so beautiful that he could feel nearly every eye in the room upon her - interesting not least because she herself was too busy keeping her peripheral vision fixed on the exits to notice.

"Do you know," he said one evening, "I don't think I've ever once seen you look directly at an escape route? But I always know you know they're there."

Natasha laughed, a little abashed. "Training 101, boss – know your exit."

"It's certainly something people make sure of when I'm around," he said, laughing too, until he saw her face fall.

"Honestly," she said, "it's a habit of mine, all the time. It's got nothing to do with Big Green and it's certainly nothing to do with you."

"No, I know," he said, meaning it, and then again, meaning it even more: "I absolutely know."

They smiled at each other and ordered dessert.

After that, he stopped noticing, stopped even thinking about the way her eyes took in doors and windows as they took their seats, enjoying instead the sensation of being observed eating with a beautiful woman by jealous men. It amused him to think that people would see them like this and assume they were lovers, whereas actually, being friends, there was no such shelf life on their dinners. They could do this forever, he thought, even until they were old, if in their line of work they got to be.

Anyway, so Bruce was busy embracing his newfound identity as an Avenger, part of a gang, bound together by being earth’s mightiest heroes and loving a good sit-down meal, and it was kind of weird to think that Tony didn't see anything bonding or special or exciting in having saved the world together.

It was part of a pattern that Bruce was beginning to notice and dislike. As his time at Stark Towers passed, Tony’s drinking increased, and his interest in discussing the New York affair decreased. When he arrived, they used to pick over it together all the time - wondering about the creatures who had filled the sky above their city, how many like them or unlike them there were out there, how many other worlds.

“To think,” Tony said once, “all that alien tech – and then, you know, that we were just smashing them all up when really we ought to have tried keeping at least _one_ alive – to study…”

By the time a month or so had passed, Tony had stopped bringing it up, ever. He changed the subject when Bruce mentioned it. After two months, Tony would leave rooms just to change the subject.

Around this time, he began to go out less and less. Bruce thought one evening, with horror, that it was as though Tony couldn't even look up at the sky in New York without seeing that big black hole eating everything up.

Bruce had been reticent even in the better days to ask what it was like, if Tony remembered anything, what he saw out there, but as things got worse he began to wonder more and more. He couldn't help but feel that something was creeping and growing, stealing like a shadow across his friend’s heart, and it made him feel an echo in his muscles of the leap, the grab, the instinct of the beast. He hated the feeling that, so far, the other guy had done a far better job of saving Tony Stark than Bruce himself seemed capable of.

+

Bruce woke up with a jump in the darkness and felt in his bones that Tony was still awake.

The time was apparently 4:02am and he'd been dreaming about something infinite – the cold, endless blackness of space. Yes, that was it: he'd dreamt about that day, that he was Tony - up there in his suit, heading out into the dark and waiting for death. He could not now recall whether it had felt like a nightmare.

Bruce swung himself out of bed, threw on a sweater and padded downstairs. Tony had more than one lab and more than one workshop in Stark Towers, and Bruce had always assumed the workplace nearest his room was sort of, madly, his? Then Tony took to working there too, and it was as if all the other labs in the building had simply dropped off the blueprint – this was it, was theirs. They might go long periods without speaking, but it was nice to have somebody to work in silence with. Bruce was consistently surprised by how comfortable he felt here, how much it felt like home.

As he headed down to the lab, Bruce wasn't entirely sure why he was even awake, much less out of bed. He knew he’d been right, though: something featuring the unmistakeable vocals of Ronnie James Dio was being played at high volume, and Tony was absolutely awake.

Bruce pulled the door open to find Tony standing in the center of the room wearing half his suit, bleeding from the right arm, although he didn't seem to have noticed this particularly. He was holding a mostly empty tumbler of whiskey in his left hand and shouting, "JARVIS, seriously! JARVIS--" 

"Good morning," said Bruce.

Tony span round and at least had the good grace to look pretty ashamed of himself. Drunk, yelling and bleeding at 4am when they'd said goodnight hours ago. _Well, fuck_ , thought Bruce. Because yeah, he knew about wasters, he knew about raging alcoholics, whatever, his father was one and he wasn't freaked out or anything, he'd seen plenty of things far worse. The difference, as far as he could see, was that he’d never cared very much for his father – but he cared about Tony.

In that moment, standing there, looking at this person who had changed his life, who’d shaken everything up without trying, Bruce wished he could fix things, alter things, like Tony could. He felt all of a sudden quite desperate and unhelpful. He felt that here he had found someone after a long period of loneliness who understood him better than he understood himself, and that person was slipping away. He loathed himself and his own inaction, and knew that loathing himself was useless, that loathing himself would not help Tony, and so loathed himself more. And as he stood there, silent, shaking, angry, his still half-sleeping muscles did something they almost never did, that he wished they would do more, and stopped waiting for his brain to tell them what to do.

Before Bruce even realized what was what, he found himself plucking the glass from Tony’s hand and putting it down, and this seemed a good enough first step that he was able to say, “What on earth are you doing?”

“I’m making – the – I need to do… the suit…”

“The suit is fine,” said Bruce. “It’s very nice. JARVIS?”

With JARVIS’s silent assistance, he unlatched the few different pieces of armor fastened to Tony’s shoulders, arms, chest, and lay them gently down on the workbench. He was doing all this as if it was routine, just a task he had to complete, and then it occurred to him that he was, in a manner of speaking, undressing Tony, and Tony hadn't even made a crack about it. It was as if he wasn't there. 

“I think you ought to be asleep,” Bruce said delicately. “Don’t you?”

Tony was beginning to look a little more himself. He smiled, and it was horrible: the sadness of the drunk mixed with the self-awareness of a man who is sobering up, and wishes he wasn't, and wishes he didn't wish that. “Bad dreams,” he said.

Bruce nodded. He took hold of Tony’s arm, which seemed to have been sliced clean by one edge of the new suit he was working on, not properly soldered. It wasn't too deep, but it was bleeding a lot.

“Sad ones or scary ones?”

Tony thought about this for a moment. “Both,” he said.

“JARVIS, is there a first aid kit around here?”

“With Mr. Stark’s track record? Naturally, Sir.” JARVIS was sounding, if possible, even more clipped than usual this evening. “The cupboard below the sink in the far right corner.”

“Thank you,” said Bruce, and then to Tony, “Sit down.”

He went to the cupboard and pulled out a small green box. They sat on the workbenches opposite each other and Tony was so passive, like a child, that Bruce felt like a boy again, playing at doctors.

“Hold still,” he said. He cleansed the cut with an antiseptic wipe, but Tony didn't even wince. Perhaps he didn't feel it. Bruce added, “Hope you've had your tetanus shot.”

Tony seemed barely aware of what was happening; he was still thinking, Bruce could tell, about those dreams. At length, he said, “I never remember what they’re about after they’re over.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” said Bruce, but didn't quite believe himself. Oh well, oh well. He wanted a coffee, he wanted his bed, he wanted, bizarrely, for Tony to be here, helping – the normal, daytime Tony, who was so effortless. Bruce tried and failed to think of the kind of smart remark Tony might make if he wasn't the source of the trouble.

Bruce took a length of sticking plaster out of the box and some small scissors, snipped off a piece the size of the cut and stuck it down. Tony’s arm looked clean and normal now, though his eyes were very bloodshot. Then suddenly he smiled and his whole face was altered by it, the warmth of it seeming to suffuse his skin. He looked younger, happier, healthier, all at once – but only for an instant, and then it was gone.

“Thank you, Dr. Banner,” he said, with a tone that tried for wry, and nearly made it.

“No problem,” said Bruce. He smiled back, his hand still covering the sticking plaster, and for a second Tony moved as if to touch him. He seemed to think better of it, but still wouldn't take those eyes off him, and there was a long pause in which, it seemed to Bruce, something slightly beyond him was being weighed up and communicated – a silly thing to think when he was one of only two people in the room.

“Maybe time for bed,” said Tony, looking away at last.

“Yes,” said Bruce. “And no more bad dreams.”

“No more bad dreams.”

“Exactly. After all, there's no monsters under the bed to have nightmares about; the only monster living in your house is your friend.” 

By the time he got back to bed, Bruce felt exhausted and relieved, and the next morning it was as if the whole thing had been a dream. They never discussed it, but Tony cut down on his drinking so quickly, Bruce almost believed there had never been any kind of problem in the first place. Almost.

+

“It’s time to go back to LA, I think.”

Bruce looked up from the newspaper he was reading. Tony was leaning against the doorjamb, a bag in each hand. He dropped them on the floor and crossed his arms, looking braced for something, some kind of resistance.

“LA?” Bruce asked. “I – for how long?”

“Well I don’t know,” said Tony. “I need some things. And also to stay there.”

Bruce felt his face doing something without his consent, which could only be described as ‘conveying disgust’.

“Oh come on, it’s November tomorrow. Jeez, don’t look at me like that. Wouldn't you rather be able to step out the door without freezing your --”

“Is that bag mine?” Bruce interrupted, getting up from the kitchen table.

Tony glanced from the bag to his hands and back to Bruce, and at least had the decency to look relatively apologetic. He held his hands up. “I thought, you know – saving time. I thought you’d want to come.”

“Well I – I don’t not want to come, but I do have things – I do have a life here, you know? And I know I owe it to you, and I'm very grateful, but - something that’s kind of like a real life, for the first time in a pretty long time…”

“I know,” Tony said, all the usual confidence dying on his face. “Yeah, no, I know that, but come on.”

 _How presumptuous_ , Bruce thought, but didn't say. What he said instead was, “Am I actually your pet?”

“You’re my friend.”

“Am I?” This sounded more bitter to Bruce’s own ears than he’d expected. “Because wow, Tony, you don’t act much like it. You don’t tell me anything, you don’t let me help you--”

“I don’t need any help with anything,” Tony said, something like annoyed and something like defensive.

“Oh really?”

“Yeah.”

“Seriously?” Bruce cried, suddenly shaking with anger – though not just anger, not quite – something more complicated and more entirely human than anger could ever be for him now. He thought of Tony drinking and drinking and not going outside and not talking about things and he said, “You fixed my shitty loser life but you aren't happy.”

There was a muscle standing out in Tony’s neck, the force of keeping something in, stoppered like a cork in a bottle. His expression was appalling when he said, “I'm happy plenty.”

Bruce thought that was probably the worst lie Tony had ever told him, in all the ‘ever’ that felt like years, but was really just a few months. He thought he wanted to push that expression away, push it into something else; he touched Tony’s arm, his shoulder, rested his hand finally on the place between his shoulder and his neck. The word _progress_ floated through his mind; he wondered why, until he saw how Tony was looking at him.

“I just want you to come because I want you to come,” Tony said quietly. He looked torn open. “It doesn't mean anything.”

“No,” said Bruce, quiet, soothing, beginning to understand himself.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of movement as Tony’s fingers twitched, the muscles shot through with potential.

“I just like having you around,” said Tony.

“I know,” said Bruce, and put his other hand somewhere, anywhere, the bottom of Tony’s ribs. Tony was looking away, staring furiously at the floor, and Bruce just said, “I know,” again.

“It’s no pressure, it’s no, it’s not a… it’s not even a thing, I don’t...”

Tony was touching his waist. He was gripping his shirt as if to reinforce his point, but all wrong, his body undermining him. Bruce kissed him. It was something he didn't realize he’d even considered until he was doing it, and suddenly it seemed he’d been considering almost nothing else for months on end.

Then Tony’s hand was on the back of his neck, and he was pressed up against the workbench, one hand fisted in Tony's t-shirt.

"Sir."

They sprang apart as if burned, startled, gasping. Bruce laughed with a hysterical edge when he realized it was only JARVIS.

"Why did you give him a human voice," Bruce asked rhetorically. "Why would anybody do that."

Tony grinned at him with half his mouth, one hand rubbing at the back of his head, abstracted and a little uncomfortable. "What is it, JARVIS?" he asked, glancing subconsciously at the speaker on the wall above the toaster.

"Sir, my sincerest apologies. You did ask me to make sure you left on time for your flight."

Bruce raised his eyebrows. Tony shrugged by way of response.

"You're leaving now?” Bruce asked. “Right now?"

"The funny thing about private planes is, you still have to pick a flight time and let people know and stuff. It's really not as good as you think it's going to be when you're fourteen."

"I kind of assumed you'd be going in the suit."

"Well I kind of assumed you'd be coming along, so."

He gestured vaguely, and in that gesture were encompassed several mysteries Bruce didn't feel up to tackling right at that moment.

He said, "So you're – I mean, you are. Leaving now."

Tony looked uncertain for a moment, then said, "Yes," decisively and with an air of finality.

Bruce took his glasses off and looked at them for a bit, sensing the futility of the gesture, or any gesture. He wished he was the kind of person who could say, _weren't we in the middle of something a minute ago?_ They could still pick up where they left off, it happened so recently, it was ridiculous to think that the moment had passed – but it had. He knew it had.

And anyway, Bruce wasn't that sort of person. Tony was, but he wasn't saying anything at all, he was just standing there looking at his feet.

"I don't think I'm coming," said Bruce.

Tony nodded, then smiled again, but it didn't reach his eyes this time.

"Somehow I knew you were going to say that."

Bruce wanted to say, _Well I can hardly change my mind now without looking like an insane person._ One kiss was not an excusable reason to change your mind and trail somebody to the other side of the country. His blood was rushing, he could feel the whoosh of a door closing, an opportunity passing him, a big one, something important, how could it be so difficult to just say the things he was actually thinking? He felt acutely that he was a character in a play. If Tony left now, he knew, it would be as though – _that_ – as though it had never happened.

"Come out for Christmas, anyway?" Tony asked.

Bruce nodded and said he would try to, though the thought made him feel hot and strange.

"Well," he added, and Tony said, "Yeah," and then, "See you around?"

This struck Bruce as somehow cruel, because it seemed to mean, _See you sometime, maybe, or never_. He tried to remind himself that Tony wanted him to come, that it was only his own, what, pig-headedness, his own brutal, self-defeating self-sufficiency that was keeping him here to be alone. Or maybe it was reasonable to want to have his own life, to at least say goodbye to his friends? Maybe he would join Tony there in a few days' time. Maybe he really would.

Tony left. Bruce watched him go.

+

Without Tony around, the structure of Bruce's days went out of the window immediately. One of the reasons he had stayed was that he had hated the thought of things changing, leaving again just when he'd become settled, but he’d never even considered what a large part Tony played in the normal life and structure he had come to prize.

Bruce drifted from room to room, tinkering, reading peer review papers, getting little done. He called Natasha the next morning to ask her to dinner, but could only get her voicemail; a well-placed call to SHIELD quickly informed him that she was away ‘on business’.

“I bet she’s breaking some villain somewhere’s neck with her thighs,” he said out loud to himself, musingly. Nobody answered; not even JARVIS, who went where Tony went.

He wanted to do something useful – but without proper marshaling, he simply couldn't. After all, Bruce Banner was no hero: he was at best the keeper of a monster that could sometimes be of use to heroes. It was a painfully different thing.

After a couple of days, Steve came round to watch a film. He had been coming over about once a week for the last few months, since Bruce decided to take him on a year-by-year chronological tour of important films that had happened while Steve was taking his sabbatical from existence. He liked Steve a lot, not least because he had a simple, unassuming goodness that, Bruce had realized with a jolt, occasionally reminded him of other people he had known from Steve’s generation, the old people who’d lived in his apartment block when he was growing up.

“What’s wrong?” Steve asked, almost as soon as Bruce opened the door.

Bruce laughed, then shook his head. He thought about saying nothing, but it seemed silly, seemed to make more of it to keep it secret. “Is that one of your Captain America powers?”

Steve raised his eyebrows. “Noticing when somebody’s in a bad mood? I think it’s just called ‘being a person’.”

Not for all of us, Bruce thought, feeling oblivious and a bit hopeless. He just wasn't as good at people as he was at other things. He shook his head. “Nothing much. I’m a little – Tony’s gone out west, so I’m a bit lonely.”

Steve frowned. “When’s he coming back?”

“I don’t know. Maybe never.” They sat down. “I’m actually kind of worried about him. I don’t think he’s in a good place.” 

Steve uttered probably the most derisive laugh he was physically capable of, and immediately apologized. “Sorry, but he isn't – I wouldn't say Tony’s the most functional, mentally healthy person I've ever met. In fact, I would say he comes pretty incredibly low on the list. And I was in a war.”

“You don’t like him, do you?” It wasn't an accusation, just a question. It had honestly, in spite of the bickering, never occurred to Bruce before.

“No, I do like him,” Steve said. “Don’t look at me like that. I honestly do. He grows on you.”

“Yeah,” said Bruce.

They were up to the cinematic year of 1964. After much consideration, Bruce had decided that the invention of the atom bomb was such recent news for Steve, he probably wasn't ready for _Dr Strangelove_ – so Steve had a choice between _Goldfinger_ and _My Fair Lady_.

Ten minutes later, Audrey Hepburn was selling flowers and Bruce wasn't thinking about his life anymore. He couldn't watch films forever, though.

After Steve went home, Bruce drank two beers alone, channel-hopped for a little while and fell asleep on the couch.

He dreamed he was the other guy, but larger than ever, impossibly large, swatting planes out of the sky like a horrible monster in Hollywood black and white. The people were small as ants, except that their screaming was just as loud as if they were normal size. Bruce woke up with his ears full of it, shaking, and for a second he thought he really had changed. He had the feeling that for the first time in a while, things were beginning to get really quite out of control. He didn't like it.

+

In spite of all the fuss Bruce had made about his life, his work and his friends in New York, he only stayed in the Tower for a week and a half after Tony left.

He'd left the bag Tony packed for him untouched, sitting still-packed on the kitchen floor where Tony had put it, and one day after breakfast, almost entirely without intending to, Bruce picked it up, took the lift all the way down and walked out into the street.

For a brief but intense moment on the bus ride to the airport, he thought he would probably just go to LA. He pictured it - turning up as casually as if it had always been the plan - but it didn't take long to change his mind. The thing was, Tony had acted so immediately as if nothing had happened that Bruce was vaguely concerned he was going a bit mad - and, worse than that, he felt so desperately that it wasn't just nothing, that the thought of seeing Tony again genuinely concerned him. He wasn't sure how he would feel or react, and Bruce was not a man who could afford the luxury of being surprised by his emotions anymore. 

So, somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Bruce had a little money saved, he'd been doing some publishing and intermittent guest lecturing at local universities since he arrived, and not paying rent, obviously. So when he got to the airport, he bought the first flight going anywhere you didn't need a visa to get into - which turned out to be Chicago. He spent a few days there, living in a hostel. He’d never been before and walked the streets aimlessly, eating mainly porridge and sandwiches, and re-reading _Candide_ for the first time since he was a boy, after finding a dog-eared copy abandoned in the bedside cabinet in his room.

After a while, the visa he'd requested came up and he boarded a flight to Mumbai.

He had sent Tony no word of his departure and left no forwarding address with anyone. Partly out of impulsiveness, partly because he was curious to see whether it would be possible to escape SHIELD's radar now that he was so firmly on it, and partly, the third and most uncomfortable part, because he had grown concerned that all the reports of a big deal new terrorist, the Mandarin, something, some bullshit name, might soon be the business of the Avengers. Though in a way he longed for this, longed to be useful again, mostly he knew that he was not very helpful right at this moment. Every night by now he dreamt of being the other guy and it felt so real that he was convinced it must be on the verge of happening at any time, of getting out of his control. He wanted to get to somewhere unpopulated, where he couldn't hurt anybody.

He also wanted to miss Christmas.

Christmas was always kind of a weird one for rootless people like Bruce, and indeed he was no exception. He hadn't especially enjoyed the Christmases of his childhood, as his father had struggled especially with occasions - perhaps the pressure not to ruin them was so great that he simply gave up. Either way, his father had always been drunk by 1pm and aggressive by about three in the afternoon, while his mother took refuge in the Catholicism Bruce didn't, couldn't share with her. 

He got out of Mumbai as quickly as possible and traveled on a series of buses towards Shahapur, doing a little simple medical work here and there, to occupy his mind rather than for money. He knew more Bengali than Marathi – he’d lived in Kolkata just before he went back to America – but he’d taken quite a liking to India in the dead years and seen quite a lot of it. Bits and pieces of Marathi soon came back. 

Bruce stayed for a few days, perhaps a week in a village just south of Vasind. He liked being able to see mountains when he woke up and he liked the feeling that New York and all its problems was a long way away. At least, he liked it until he overheard a radio broadcast in the second week of December, hitching a ride in a jeep out into the next village, even more distant than the last. It was in a language he didn't know, but two words stood right out: 'Mandarin' and 'Stark'.

He felt himself go a little bit cold. After all, they had needed him (or if not him, at very least the other guy) before. Why shouldn't they need him again? Why shouldn't Bruce have stayed to be useful?

He suddenly felt that rather than doing something sensible and right by getting away until he knew he had everything under control, he had actually run from the people who needed him most. He was also concerned by the fact that the broadcast had said 'Stark' rather than 'Iron Man', though of course he knew Tony would be fine. How could he not be? Any more than one near-death experience within a year would just be over-dramatic.

+

“Do you want to travel?”

This from Mike, a skinned-knees sort of boy who lived in the apartment upstairs. His mother was crazy and cried all the time so he spent a lot of time down at Bruce’s. They had nothing in common, but Mike was okay to have around sometimes for company, maybe.

Bruce looked up at him. They were eating dinner. “Don’t know,” he said.

“I do,” said Mike. “I want to go everywhere.”

“Eat your peas,” said Bruce’s mother. “Don’t you dare leave those, I see you.”

Bruce’s dad was AWOL again. Whenever he didn't show up for dinner, Bruce was sent up to fetch Mike and down he came, and the three of them ate together like a family. The only thing was that Bruce never really knew what to say.

Sometimes Mike said, “Bruce, you’re so weird,” but he didn't sound like the kids at school when he said it. It was like a compliment.

“I've got a scrap book with all the places in it that I want to go,” said Mike, laying his knife and fork down on his clear plate. “Thank you Mrs. Banner.”

“You’re welcome, Michael.”

“So do you want to see my scrapbook? I made it today.”

Bruce finished his peas. “Okay,” he said. “Sure.”

Mike grinned.

+

Bruce only stayed out in the village one night before giving up and heading on to Shahapur as quickly as possible. He just wanted to glance at a newspaper written in English, maybe scan through it; as soon as he knew everything was fine, he could go on with his life.

It took him seven hours to get there and when he did, another half hour of searching before he found a recent newspaper. There was a picture on the front page of a cliff face where Tony's LA house used to be – Bruce had never been, but he'd seen photos – and though the paper was not in English, the words 'Iron Man' still were, like a trademark or a brand. And the last word was one that, having practiced medicine in several places over the last few years, he knew in plenty of languages: 'dead'.

Bruce put the newspaper back down very gently, almost reverently, smoothing the pages as he replaced it on the stand. He was distantly surprised to notice that his hands were shaking, but he didn't feel anything at all; what he was experiencing could barely even be described as disbelief. It was simply as if somebody had taken a very large spoon and scooped out the part of his brain that could feel.

He walked away from the stand and realized that his legs were shaking too. His whole body, in fact, was trembling.

Bruce took a right turn down a side street and sank very slowly down against a wall. He felt better to be sitting, which opened the gateway to a world in which he could feel all kind of things. He experienced the most horrible crushing sensation in his chest, as if a very cold hand had grabbed hold of his heart and squeezed. He stayed there for a while, sitting on the floor of a backstreet of a city he had never visited before, listening to the sound of his own breathing. There was a kind of static, a white noise, at the edge of his hearing, but Bruce was doing his level best to ignore it. He was trying to ignore a lot of things.

After about fifteen minutes of sitting very still, Bruce realized with dull surprise that he had been crying. He wiped his face with the palms of his hands, knowing that the first wave of shock was over now and it was time to do something, he needed to be busy.

Bruce stood up. Some children were looking at him. He lifted a hand to them, not sure what he meant by the gesture, and they scattered, ashamed of having been caught in the naughtiness of spying.

He had stopped shaking now, and set off straight away. It was good to be standing and walking with purpose, just like he might have done if everything was normal. If that newspaper didn't exist.

He found the bus he could that was going straight back to Mumbai, no stops, from where he knew he could get a direct flight to New York. Then it struck him - was it better to go to LA or to New York? He had no idea when this had happened, how much time had passed between that photo being taken and him seeing it. With the purest horror, he wondered whether Tony's funeral would be in New York or LA, and then he had to stop, just _stop_. He couldn't think about any of this, couldn't think at all. All he knew was that a series of steps lay before him which would take him back to America; all of these had to be followed, one after another, and he needed to focus on that. 

+

By the time Bruce's plane touched down in New York he had been awake for about fifty-two hours. He’d woken up terrified once or twice from dozing on the plane, nervous of what he might dream, knowing it would be unwise to give the other guy even an inch. He’d felt too nauseous to really relax anyway, from a mixture of barely withheld emotions and too much caffeine. Even by the time he'd boarded the aircraft, his hands wouldn't stop shaking. He'd told the woman next to him that he was a nervous flier.

Landing at last, Bruce felt like he was in a dream. He went dazedly through customs and baggage reclaim, and in the duty free section he scanned the newspapers out of habit.

IRON MAN HERO, or variations on that theme, were printed on the front of every one, accompanied by photos of Tony with the grinning US President, arms around each other like old friends.

IRON MAN HERO.

Bruce felt a bubble of hysteria rise in his chest as he approached, ever so slowly, like the paper might turn to dust if startled. He snatched one of the newspapers up and, clutching it tightly, read: 'Magnate superhero Tony Stark, believed dead after the destruction of his LA home this week, made a triumphant return last night as...'

Bruce laughed.

Then he laughed harder.

"Buddy, are you going to pay for that?"

Bruce looked round a little wildly. The man who ran the store was looking at Bruce with a suspicion he couldn't help but feel he deserved; also, he knew it wouldn't help the situation, but he had a feeling he was about to start laughing again. He thrust the paper hurriedly into the man's hands, saying, "Sorry, no American money," and rushed away, his hands over his mouth.

He went into one of the bathrooms on his way out, ran a sink full of water and stuck his face in it until he was calm and less sick and also not cackling like a hysterical madman. He dried his face with the paper towels and stood still breathing for a little while with his hands on the sink. This done, it seemed like probably a good time to go home and go to bed.

Bruce knew now that he had to go to LA to see Tony, and indeed he could hardly wait, but in this state, he wasn't sure he’d make it there in one piece. He’d been awake forever, and felt weak now that the shock and grief that had powered him on had been snatched so suddenly away. No, he couldn't go yet: before he did anything else of any kind, he absolutely had to sleep.

Bruce was so tired he even got a cab right from the front of the airport to Stark Towers. He usually considered cabs highly excessive, but he was so sleep-deprived and light-headed that he felt as if he was dreaming the whole way, so it was definitely more sensible than getting the bus. Even in the cold midwinter, New York was heat and light – it was alive, he could feel it in his nerve endings, which tingled with some combination of that and (more likely responsible, now he thought about it) the vast amount of coffee he’d imbibed on the plane.

Bruce got the cab to stop about two blocks from Stark Tower - he never knew what he might do in the face of questions about why he was going there; unlike Tony, he had no great desire to be connected with his alter-ego - and walked back with his bag slung over his shoulder, marveling at how different things could be from what you expected. He'd pictured this walk on the plane, half-dreaming: New York covered in snow, himself like a character in a Russian novel, freezing, un-coated and in mourning. In reality, he still had the jacket he'd taken when he left, it was cold but rather dry, and Tony was…out there somewhere. Bruce could call him now if he wanted. It was so simple. Anything was possible.

Bruce took the lift up to the kitchen, intending to drink about six glasses of water and then maybe pass out on the floor for a little bit, but from the moment he left the lift shaft, he could hear music playing.

It was early Black Sabbath, and it was coming from the kitchen.

Bruce eased the door open. There he was, inevitably, as if it was all so simple. Tony was just standing there, poking at something in a saucepan, barefoot, tapping one hand against his leg in time to the music.

Bruce felt certain now that he was dreaming, that this whole thing had been a beautiful dream and in reality he was still on the plane and Tony was dead. But then Tony looked up at him and smiled one of the slowest, happiest smiles Bruce had ever seen on his face. It looked natural and real. He hadn't even realized, last time he saw him, how unnatural Tony’s smiles had gotten. How could he not have realized that?

Bruce felt a bit like he might fall over, but didn't. Instead he said simply, "You're here."

Tony laughed. He looked calm, but he was being very still, as he had been when they first met – sort of as if Bruce was a wild animal who might bolt. It was only then that Bruce remembered he had actually been absent for some weeks himself.

"Yeah," said Tony. "I don't know if you saw this, but my other house got kind of..."

Here he made a complicated, rather long hand gesture, indicating an explosion, lots of tumbling rock and several other explosions, then something soaring downwards and hitting an expanse of water.

"It was very dramatic and exciting," Tony added. "You'd have hated it."

Bruce nodded slowly and slid into a chair. He felt that he needed very much to sit down. After they’d looked at each other for a moment or two, Tony still standing by the cooker, Bruce said, "I thought you were dead."

All the amusement faded from Tony's face; presumably, Bruce thought, because he himself was a horrible and unusual mixture of ashen white and pale, nauseous green. Feeling he ought to qualify that statement for some reason, he added, "It was on the front of a newspaper in Shahapur."

Tony looked very guilty and concerned. "You – seriously? You thought I was dead and then I was just standing here? Fuck."

"Well, no, not actually when I - I saw a different paper when I got here, but - on the plane - all the way back..." Bruce trailed off.

Tony nodded, looking elsewhere in a decided sort of way. Then, speaking slowly, he said, "And that made you feel...?"

Bruce blinked.

"Are you checking I'd be sad if you died?” he asked incredulously. “Is that actually what you just did there?"

Tony didn't answer.

"Yes," said Bruce. "Yes, I was sad. Christ, I haven't - slept, I mean I --"

"No, well, it was just – you kind of took off there, buddy. I mean I called you a couple times. I was beginning to wonder if you might be wholly resistant to my vast charisma and charm."

There was something wicked in Tony’s smile now, but his eyes were distant. My god, thought Bruce, he isn't quite joking. He wondered at the fact that Tony had very nearly died thinking Bruce liked him so little, he’d left the country to avoid him. He opened his mouth to say something, but a rattling sound started coming from the pan.

"What are you doing?" asked Bruce.

Tony's face broke into a grin. He reached into the saucepan with a large silver spoon and started rooting about.

"Yeah, about that," he said.

When he brought the spoon out, there was a little, light brown, freshly boiled egg sitting on it. He was cooking. He was 'cooking'. He was boiling a fucking egg.

Bruce started laughing so hard he could barely breathe. He covered his face with his hands, elbows on the table, and laughed and laughed. Tony started laughing too.

"I have to go to bed," said Bruce eventually. "I've been awake forever, you've no idea. I'm hysterical."

"Not yet!" said Tony. "Don't you even want to hear about my near-death adventure?”

“Experience. People call it a ‘near-death experience’.”

“But it was an adventure. I’m so heroic, come on, don’t you want to hear all about how heroic I was?"

"Well--"

"Don't you want to at least eat this egg?"

Bruce laughed again. "Oh god, don't," he said. Then, "Actually - yes?"

He was starving. He'd felt too sick and miserable all the way here to eat, but suddenly it was all he could think about. He had the egg (over-done, but that didn't stop Tony being extremely pleased with himself) with a few slices of bread and immediately felt better.

Meanwhile, Tony, apparently more stung than Bruce had realized by a casual remark Bruce had half-forgotten making – his complaint that Tony did not confide in him – began telling Bruce all about how mad he had been since New York. He talked about his panic attacks, the way past mistakes seemed to suddenly start making a point of catching up with him, as if to teach him a lesson.

Bruce nodded along. He was genuinely interested to hear Tony talk like this, but also felt that he was now on the verge of hallucinating. He was so tired his vision was swimming; he tried to work out how many hours he’d been awake, then had to give up. They moved into the next room and Tony kept right on going.

As soon as Bruce was sitting comfortably, he fell, immediately and quite happily, into a deep and dreamless sleep.

+

Somehow, nothing happened. Bruce had thought, for a moment in the airport when he knew he had to go to LA, that when he got there - spilling out of a car and onto the sidewalk in front of Tony, apologizing, looking and thinking like a normal-ish human who hadn't been awake and travelling for far too long - he'd really thought maybe - but who knows. Anyway, it didn't happen like that.

For a day or so, Bruce was unwell, probably from some combination of exhaustion and malnourishment. He spent the time just drifting around, alternately sleeping his jet lag off and making endless cups of tea, which he would leave half-drunk on work surfaces around the house. He assumed Tony was getting rid of them, because he could never find them where he'd left them, but if he was, Bruce never saw him do it.

Bruce felt that Tony (who was enjoying lying low from the press a bit after his 'near death adventures' and had taken heavily to reading in the bath) was watching him a lot. Never conspicuously, but still - quite a lot. Bruce wasn't sure if Tony was waiting for something or just checking to make sure that Bruce wasn't about to disappear again.

And all the while, as they slept in their separate beds and dreamed their separate dreams and drifted around each other like two familiar strangers, talking occasionally, though Bruce was generally still too exhausted to talk much - all the while Christmas drifted ever closer. 

On December 22nd two things happened: the first was that it finally started to snow, after days of horrible dry cold that bit at your cheeks and fingertips; the second was that Bruce felt better. He woke up at a normal time and felt eager to go out, having not left the house since returning to New York.

He dressed and walked two blocks to a decent supermarket wearing a woolly hat and an over-sized coat, and bought eggs and bacon and orange juice and soft white bread. Then he walked home and cooked breakfast for the two of them; Tony looked delighted, though he didn't say much either way. They ate thick buttered toast with scrambled eggs, bacon, coffee and orange juice, and finally talked about what Bruce had been up to while he was travelling.

"I just sometimes," he said, by way of an explanation, "feel weird about Christmas. I know that's very clichéd."

"Not at all," said Tony.

“You can judge me.”

“I would never do that.” Tony put down his coffee and studied Bruce over the table. Then he said, "Not long to go now. Few days. You taking off again?"

"No, I don't think so."

Tony smiled and Bruce smiled back at him. _Now,_ Bruce thought, _do it now, it has to be now._

He didn't do anything.

Strangely, though, he didn't feel disappointed about it either. It was as if some voice was saying to him, softly, softly. One step at a time.

Bruce spent the afternoon working in the lab, trying to pick apart the things he'd thought were important a few weeks ago. Tony drifted in and out, occasionally making comments, usually not, and at lunchtime they turned the rest of the bread into sandwiches, which they ate in front of the middle hour of _Miracle on 34th Street_.

That evening, Bruce stomped up from the lab towards the sound of voices, and was confronted by the sight of Steve and Tony sitting on the couch, chatting cheerfully away. Bruce didn't peer out of the window to see if any pigs were flying by, but it was a close-run thing.

Steve stood up and clapped Bruce on the shoulder, which was presumably the 1940s equivalent of a hug. He was unbelievably strong and Bruce had a sudden hysterical urge to exaggerate the genuine force of Steve's pat and pitch forwards onto the couch. He fought it down.

"Hey there," said Steve. "It's been a while."

There was something sweetly awkward about his tone, clearly not wanting to ignore or acknowledge Bruce's absence, and wondering how to do the politest thing. Bruce laughed.

"Yeah, sorry about that," he said. Steve waved a hand. 

"I heard you were doing this film thing,” said Tony, “with all the different years? Anyway I thought it was probably time to carry on. This guy needs a cultural education like I need to learn not to give my home address out to megalomaniacs."

And suddenly Bruce got it. If the last few days had been a kind of quiet apology, this was a statement of intent. This was Tony's way of distancing himself from his behavior of the last few months, when he’d kept everybody at arm's length, not seen himself as part of anything. This said, _Look, haven't I changed? Aren't I trying?_

Bruce felt overwhelmed suddenly by the realization that Tony was working so hard to be happy, it was humbling. Tony had done it all, so much, he was trying so hard, and Bruce knew the ball was in his court now. His turn.

He blinked once, twice, processing this, trying to show that he understood without showing that he understood too much, here, in front of Steve. In the end he just said, "Good idea. We were up to 1965, I think."

The evening passed in a blur. Popcorn, a raging debate about the relative merits of _The Sound of Music_ vs. _Doctor Zhivago_ (conclusion: Julie Andrews 1 – 0 Julie Christie) and a bunch of half-assed witticisms. Bruce was delighted to see Steve but also anxious for him to go, and perhaps his Captain America senses were tingling, because he didn't stay late.

“Early start tomorrow,” he said, putting his coat on.

“You’re a superhero,” said Bruce. “You literally set your own hours, how is that – how can that even...?”

“Training,” Steve shrugged reasonably. He was, it emerged, getting up early to run a half-marathon, and needed to get out of the city first, because it was ‘too busy’ with Christmas shoppers.

“Insane,” said Tony, after the door shut behind him. “A lost cause. What a horrible tragedy.”

“It’s freezing out here. He could lose limbs.”

“He’s monomaniacal,” said Tony, shaking his head as Bruce followed him into the kitchen.

“Obsessive.”

“Yes,” said Tony. “That too. Another beer?”

“I don’t know. I thought I might go to bed.”

The silence in the entire rest of their gigantic building was suddenly appallingly loud. 

“Listen,” said Tony, at the exact same moment as Bruce muttered, “Look…”

They both laughed and looked at each other silently, as if to say, _You first._

They were standing very close together now, almost exactly where they were last time, when – when last time happened. _Always in the kitchen_ , Bruce thought. _Wonder if that means anything._

“We always have these little moments in the kitchen, don’t we?” Tony asked. “Does that say something about us?”

“What makes you think this is a little moment?”

Bruce could feel the heat of Tony’s skin from the few inches between them, the brush of Tony’s knuckles against his own, both their hearts pounding, hear the blood rushing in his own ears, terrified. This could all be a terrible mistake.

“Well,” said Tony, and kissed him.

It was hard, messy, desperate. Tony nearly choked Bruce with his own jumper in his hurry to remove it, before Bruce pulled them both down onto the kitchen floor, which was too cold, but the only thing close enough.

Tony said, “Finally, fucking – Jesus, _finally_ ,” and Bruce said, “Stop, don’t, if you ruin this,” and Tony pinched him hard enough to made him gasp.

“How could even I ruin this?” he asked.

Bruce pulled back for a moment - the only moment between now and when it finished, when they lay panting together on the kitchen floor, that they weren't kissing - and touched Tony’s face with his hand. He stroked a line up Tony’s cheekbone, shaking his head. “No,” he said at length, “you’re right. I don’t think even you could.”

Tony kissed Bruce’s jaw, his neck, his collarbone, put a hand across his heart and then his hipbone, sighed as Bruce got a hand beneath his shirt to cover the thin, hot skin across his ribs. Outside, the snow came down.

+

Yesterday was Bruce’s thirteenth birthday and he was lucky enough to get everything he wanted, including a new pair of glasses, a thick, age-inappropriate medical tome and another book on nuclear physics, which he’d just gotten interested in. This last was full of tempting, mysterious phrases like ‘isomeric shift’ and ‘chromodynamics’ and ‘Quark–gluon plasma’, many of which he was to learn the meanings but not the pronunciations of, as the books rarely came with those. Like most people who learned more from reading than from school, Bruce was eventually to learn that he mispronounced a great many things and find himself embarrassed in front of his peers, long ago and far away from when he first learned the meanings.

But Bruce didn't know that yet. Today was the day after the nervous, semi-excitement of his birthday, when the real excitement could begin. Holding the books in his small hands (he was a boy who wouldn't get big enough until sixteen at least, too late to change the pattern of his victim-hood), he sat in the sun on the stoop out front of their block. He had a half-full carton of orange juice on one side of him and a lifetime of wonders spread out before him – he could feel it.

Upstairs in his apartment he’d left his father shouting, drunk still from the day before and spoiling for a fight. He struggled with occasions, which made Bruce nervous of his birthdays, but excited for the days that came after the birthdays themselves.

He started by flicking through the medical book, and got first glimpse of its new, seductive words; ‘cartoid’, ‘haemorrhage’, ‘quadriparesis’. _Look at them all_ , he thought. And he wondered how, with words like these on his side, he could possibly fail to change the world.

Bruce opened the book randomly to a section on nerve endings in the brain. ‘The word ‘pain’,’ he read, ‘is derived from the Latin _poena_. This means both ‘penalty’ and ‘punishment' - although of course, in modern medicine, we know pain is merely a signal from the body to the brain that something is wrong, rather than a moral judgement.’


End file.
